Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by William Chea on August 16, 2011 at 2:21pm

Really wish you didt put this in all caps. This is NOT a factual statment and who is "Steve Beede?"

 

From BofA's Allen Seelenbinder

 

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The headline and facts presented are completely untrue and a total fabrication.

 

The implementation of the legislation may be cumbersome and possibly effect the settlement of certain seconds by particular investors. In fact, I have been made aware of 2 situations where we serviced the first and another lender serviced the second that have been impacted with a revised (increased) settlement on the second after approval.

 

We have NO policy regarding not approving second lien short sales in CA. We are actually pro actively reaching out to thousands of homeowners every month to engage in short sales after all modification options have been exhausted."

 

It is this type of blatant misinformation from so called "experts" that continues to drag down the process and the market. It is no wonder the industry and GSEs are cracking down on third party negotiators.

Permalink Reply by Louise Dela Cruz on August 16, 2011 at 2:42pm

We have an opportunity to provide information, share our experiences and assist one another by doing so.

This is a factual statement and the experiences of a local Real Estate Attorney who works with many of us Realtors and our clients here in Sacramento California.

Many of us as Realtors have vast experiences rather they be "policy" or not and I have many examples of varying responses in and out of Equator with Bank of America over the past several years. My point is that I would never refer to any information obtained in this forum as "not factual" nor say that information is " completely untrue and a total fabrication."

I respect and admire Mr. Beede and find all of his blogs, posts, etc. to be quite informative and helpful. In fact, it was from him that I first heard of SB 458 which has helped a multitude of Californians.

Defaming, name calling, being derogatory or negative are not the reasons this forum exists.

Good luck to you on your short sales William.

Permalink Reply by William Chea on August 16, 2011 at 5:26pm

Louise, you asked about this and I gave you the response from the top at Bank of America.

 

Your title of you post was quite inflamatory. "BofA CANCELLING SHORT SALES!!" Come on!!

 

Permalink Reply by Katerina Gasset on August 16, 2011 at 8:23pm

I would always go to the source first, in this case, go straight to Bank Of America to get their response to accusations about their conduct or response to a particular situation.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on August 17, 2011 at 2:50am

I agree with Katerina, go to the source, not a real estate attorney who is most likely "lead generating".  Allen Seelenbinder has always been a straight shooter when asked these types of questions, he has responded directly to me several times.  I would seem to think that he would know the answer to this post for sure.  I may see him or someone from BofA next month so I will bring this up.

Katerina Gasset said:

I would always go to the source first, in this case, go straight to Bank Of America to get their response to accusations about their conduct or response to a particular situation.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on August 17, 2011 at 3:02am

Let's be civil and use this information as what it is, nothing official.  The title is a bit scary but short sales are scary. William, I have tried to get Allen on here with no luck, if you have a relationship with him, get him to join the site.

William Chea said:

Louise, you asked about this and I gave you the response from the top at Bank of America.

 

Your title of you post was quite inflamatory. "BofA CANCELLING SHORT SALES!!" Come on!!

 

Permalink Reply by ElizabethWeintraub00697006LyonRE on August 17, 2011 at 2:53pm

I've experienced no difficulties thus far in my Bank of America short sales. In fact, when I received an approval letter containing deficiency verbiage, I emailed the negotiator and asked for the verbiage to be removed pursuant to SB 458, and he quickly obliged. Attorneys don't have all the answers. I closed a short sale a few months ago in which a lawyer was unsuccessful at getting Bank of America to release the seller, even after he wrote a letter -- so I wrote a letter to the bank and Bank of America responded to my letter and released the seller from liability.

 

Elizabeth Weintraub

Broker-Associate #00697006

Lyon Real Estate

Sacramento Short Sale Agent

Lyon Real Estate is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on August 18, 2011 at 6:30am

Sorry William, what you have here is a puff piece from a BOA spokesman.  I deal "with" BOA daily.  It is no pleasure trip and the comment that BOA is reaching out to help the homeowner has very little evidence compared to the opposite.  I deal in reality, not BOA or extremist puff.  I see and feel what happens, I don't need to ask a BOA spokesperson what I am seeing daily.  And I really enjoy the "don't talk about BOA and obey us or we'll push harder to get rid of anyone who understands short sales and is trying to help the homeowner."  Nice touch!  Oh, any facts there?  Oops - missing.

A problem you have with your post is that many of us know BOA quite well.  People make mistakes, and with BOA, just about anything can happen regardless of it being a BOA official policy, hidden policy or just extremely incompetent work.  With BOA, some is so bad, I keep trying to figure out if it really can happen out of incompetence or is it just so bad that it has to be done on purpose.  BOA is a puzzle like that.  Don't bother getting your friend to write that what I see in front of me is not true.

Let's pretend that your BOA friend is responsible and actually has an interest in homeowners and getting the best deal for the investor.  Wouldn't he ask about these clients who were told that BOA won't do these deals, etc.?  Yep, he would.  Did he?  Hmmm..  And, from my experience, it is highly likely that such a thing happened and that, indeed, right or wrong, the negotiators said that.  I get false info from BOA negotiators a lot.  You are saying that realtors should not quote BOA negotiators because they killed the deals and are lying, realtors should only quote your homeowner loving BOA spokesperson?

I guess you can tell I don't care for bull shock radio/TV.  You want to straighten something out, great.  You want to give us a head's up on something, great.  You want to sling generic hyperbole from BOA, start your own post so I don't have to see it.

There is so much that goes wrong at BOA whether on purpose or not, I think only someone totally unattached with these things or has a whitewash (or blast) agenda could possibly discount almost any story without thinking that they should see what really happened.

 

William Chea said:

Really wish you didt put this in all caps. This is NOT a factual statment and who is "Steve Beede?"

 

From BofA's Allen Seelenbinder

 

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The headline and facts presented are completely untrue and a total fabrication.

 

The implementation of the legislation may be cumbersome and possibly effect the settlement of certain seconds by particular investors. In fact, I have been made aware of 2 situations where we serviced the first and another lender serviced the second that have been impacted with a revised (increased) settlement on the second after approval.

 

We have NO policy regarding not approving second lien short sales in CA. We are actually pro actively reaching out to thousands of homeowners every month to engage in short sales after all modification options have been exhausted."

 

It is this type of blatant misinformation from so called "experts" that continues to drag down the process and the market. It is no wonder the industry and GSEs are cracking down on third party negotiators.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on August 18, 2011 at 6:47am

Joe, respectfully, you and I have the exact opposite opinion on Bank of America.  I know the person that William speaks of and every single time that I have had an issue that Allen Seelenbinder could take care of, he did. Of course we are both  Boilermakers from Purdue :)  He is very easily approachable and always willing to lend a hand to me when I need him which is not very often.  In the past 12 months, Bank of America has become the short sale that I LOVE to take because their systems are more streamlined and we get approvals very quickly from them and anytime I have issues my contacts at Bank Of America have taken care of it for me.  I don't do alot of short sales, will probably close maybe 60 shorts this year and the majority of them are Bank of America so my opinion is based handling alot less short sales than most.

My contacts came about from some MAJOR battles over the years with Bank of America so I have to say that I also dont agree with your assumption that Bank of America is conspiring to get rid of agents who know short sales or who are trying to help homeowners. Again, my experience has been quite the opposite.  It was real estate agents who kicked and screamed over the old fax in system that took 6 to 8 months to close a short sale and we got the equator system.  Alot of communication with 2 top agents in Arizona led Bank of America to equator and we now see approval times in less than 4 weeks in most cases and worst case 60 to 90 days so I believe that Bank of America is listening to us.  They also have been working on their buyer substitution policy as a result of our feedback and also have Twitter to help us with resolutions.

I am in a mastermind group and we have met with Bank of America VPs many times and they have been very receptive to us and have listened to our concerns and most of all we have been able to build some really good relationships to show them that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem..

In closing, I think that we as agents need to drop the adversarial approach when we deal with these banks.  Sure, the front line negotiators are tough to deal with, they have guidelines to follow and they have people to answer to.  Starting off with them and thinking that they are just here to screw us is the wrong idea.  Trust me, I found out the hard way.  Once I started to find out more about the negotiators, more about them personally, I found that I get much further than I did when I used to rant and rave and escalate the situation.  Now I get many more flies with the honey and get my files approved and when I do have a REAL problem, I always have someone that is willing to help me.

Just my 2 cents :)

Happy short selling!

joe beauchamp said:

Sorry William, what you have here is a puff piece from a BOA spokesman.  I deal "with" BOA daily.  It is no pleasure trip and the comment that BOA is reaching out to help the homeowner has very little evidence compared to the opposite.  I deal in reality, not BOA or extremist puff.  I see and feel what happens, I don't need to ask a BOA spokesperson what I am seeing daily.  And I really enjoy the "don't talk about BOA and obey us or we'll push harder to get rid of anyone who understands short sales and is trying to help the homeowner."  Nice touch!  Oh, any facts there?  Oops - missing.

A problem you have with your post is that many of us know BOA quite well.  People make mistakes, and with BOA, just about anything can happen regardless of it being a BOA official policy, hidden policy or just extremely incompetent work.  With BOA, some is so bad, I keep trying to figure out if it really can happen out of incompetence or is it just so bad that it has to be done on purpose.  BOA is a puzzle like that.  Don't bother getting your friend to write that what I see in front of me is not true.

Let's pretend that your BOA friend is responsible and actually has an interest in homeowners and getting the best deal for the investor.  Wouldn't he ask about these clients who were told that BOA won't do these deals, etc.?  Yep, he would.  Did he?  Hmmm..  And, from my experience, it is highly likely that such a thing happened and that, indeed, right or wrong, the negotiators said that.  I get false info from BOA negotiators a lot.  You are saying that realtors should not quote BOA negotiators because they killed the deals and are lying, realtors should only quote your homeowner loving BOA spokesperson?

I guess you can tell I don't care for bull shock radio/TV.  You want to straighten something out, great.  You want to give us a head's up on something, great.  You want to sling generic hyperbole from BOA, start your own post so I don't have to see it.

There is so much that goes wrong at BOA whether on purpose or not, I think only someone totally unattached with these things or has a whitewash (or blast) agenda could possibly discount almost any story without thinking that they should see what really happened.

 

William Chea said:

Really wish you didt put this in all caps. This is NOT a factual statment and who is "Steve Beede?"

 

From BofA's Allen Seelenbinder

 

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The headline and facts presented are completely untrue and a total fabrication.

 

The implementation of the legislation may be cumbersome and possibly effect the settlement of certain seconds by particular investors. In fact, I have been made aware of 2 situations where we serviced the first and another lender serviced the second that have been impacted with a revised (increased) settlement on the second after approval.

 

We have NO policy regarding not approving second lien short sales in CA. We are actually pro actively reaching out to thousands of homeowners every month to engage in short sales after all modification options have been exhausted."

 

It is this type of blatant misinformation from so called "experts" that continues to drag down the process and the market. It is no wonder the industry and GSEs are cracking down on third party negotiators.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on August 18, 2011 at 6:50am

Elizabeth, I too have little difficulties with Bank of America on short sales.  I think alot of it has to do with our approach in getting what we want.   in your case of the lawyer, most likely the extent of what he did was send a certified letter asking it to be removed and never followed up. 

I wish that I could get a few hundred Bank of America short sale listings!!

ElizabethWeintraub00697006LyonRE said:

I've experienced no difficulties thus far in my Bank of America short sales. In fact, when I received an approval letter containing deficiency verbiage, I emailed the negotiator and asked for the verbiage to be removed pursuant to SB 458, and he quickly obliged. Attorneys don't have all the answers. I closed a short sale a few months ago in which a lawyer was unsuccessful at getting Bank of America to release the seller, even after he wrote a letter -- so I wrote a letter to the bank and Bank of America responded to my letter and released the seller from liability.

 

Elizabeth Weintraub

Broker-Associate #00697006

Lyon Real Estate

Sacramento Short Sale Agent

Lyon Real Estate is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.

Permalink Reply by Louise Dela Cruz on August 18, 2011 at 10:44am

Oh my, after doing this for several years (dealing with BofA Equator and otherwise),  I must say I see Joe's perspective as well as Elizabeth's and Jeff's.

Certainly experience, patience and persistence are paramount to being successful. Many times I call and I know almost immediately the service agent in the queue is new. I will politely hang up and call back to get one who is saavy, experienced, knows the time lines, etc.

I do believe as well that service is paramount; this being said, doing further investigation into any matter and taking responsibility, humility, and apologies (regardless of results), are always welcome.

For instance, if my client complained about my Administrator, transaction coordinator, title rep, inspector, etc. I can't see myself saying to them they are "fabricating" or speaking lies or "untruths".

 

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on August 19, 2011 at 8:58am

Louise, hanging up and calling back is very wise.  Before equator I would do the call in and if that person sounded like they were having a bad day, I would hang up and call right back.  Since equator, I rarely ever make a phone call, I use the messaging system and escalate from there if needed.  If I escalate outside of equator I always send a message to the negotiator and CC their supervisor and keep working up the chain of command.  Usually the first one works but I sometimes do get to the VP level to get something done.  I have found MOST at BofA are not bad to deal with if you treat them with some respect or maybe even stroke their egos a bit :) 

I have a BofA REO account and if you think their short sales are bad, dont even think about listing their foreclosures :(  I would rather work a short sale than an REO anytime

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page